Re: [boost] [General] Always treat std::strings as UTF-8

Subject: Re: [boost] [General] Always treat std::strings as UTF-8
From: Matus Chochlik (chochlik_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-01-19 04:26:05

On Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 8:53 PM, Robert Ramey <ramey_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>>>
>>> Just a thought.
>>
>> That instead of the currently used 2 string classes
>> you'll end up with N string classes. That thought
>> is not very appealing to me.
>
> I don't think that's a fair statement. Â The above only has 4
> and that's including EBCDIC.

But those four are not the only widespread encoding schemes,
what about KOI8, CPXYZ, etc.

>
> Sorry, I don't get the "2" above.

I meant std::string and std::wstring which contains one
string class too many IMO.

>
> In any case, one could state with Just utf8_string and
> ansi_string (should be simple), put it into boost and see how
> many people use it. Â If it's truely an improvement, usage of
> std:string would atrophy to the point of being irrelevent. Â If
> there are still reasons for using std::string directly, then it
> wouldn't, but no harm would be done. This has all the upside
> and none of the downside.
>
> If this were made,

One of the downsides is that C++ would be abandoning
a nice name 'string' to ugly 'utf8_t' or whatever.